Let None Be Faithless to the Wife of His Youth

Have we not all one Father? Did not one God create us?
Why do we profane the covenant of our fathers by breaking faith
with one another? Judah has broken faith. A detestable thing has
been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem: Judah has desecrated the
sanctuary the LORD loves, by marrying the daughter of a foreign
god. As for the man who does this, whoever he may be, may the LORD
cut him off from the tents of Jacob—even though he brings
offerings to the LORD Almighty. Another thing you do: You flood the
LORD's altar with tears. You weep and wail because he no longer
pays attention to your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from
your hands. You ask, "Why?" It is because the LORD is acting as the
witness between you and the wife of your youth, because you have
broken faith with her, though she is your partner, the wife of your
marriage covenant. Has not the LORD made them one? In flesh and
spirit they are his. And why one? Because he was seeking godly
offspring. So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith
with the wife of your youth. "I hate divorce," says the LORD God of
Israel, "and I hate a man's covering himself with violence as well
as with his garment," says the LORD Almighty. "So guard yourself in
your spirit, and do not break faith." (NIV)

Last week we saw in verse 8 of this chapter that the result of
priestly failure is that many are caused to stumble. "You [priests]
have turned aside form the way; you have caused many to stumble by
your instruction." In other words, when the truth and power of God
begin to fade from the Christian community, then two other things
begin to drain away from the Christian community as well, namely,

the clarity of vision to avoid moral traps, and

the strength
to stand upright when the whole world would drag you down.

When there is a famine of the Word of God in the land, the
spiritual nutrients that enable the eye to spot sin as sin are gone.
And the spiritual protein that gives strength the moral muscle of
the soul to do what is right is missing. The spiritual eye becomes
diseased through malnutrition, and the clear lines between sin and
righteousness begin to blur. The moral muscle of the will
atrophies, and weakens, and the result is that the beckoning of the
world wins because there is no strength to stand against it. When
the ministry of the Word goes wrong, many are caused to
stumble.

Three Areas in Which Israel Was Stumbling

Today's text spells out for us three areas where the people of
Israel were stumbling.

In verse 10 it's the general area of personal relationships:
"Why then are we faithless to one another?" There was widespread
dishonesty. People were not keeping their word. Trusts were being
broken. "Why are we faithless [or treacherous] with each other?"
That is, Why can we not trust each other? Why all this breaking of
faith?

In verses 11–12 Malachi gets specific and touches on the area of
marriage to unbelievers. The last line of verse 11 says that Judah
"has married the daughter of a foreign God." That means that many
of the men were marrying women who were not believers in the true
God. This was a very serious stumbling in the eyes of God.

In verses 13–16 Malachi deals with the issue of divorce. Verse
16 makes the issue clearest: "I hate divorce, says the Lord the God
of Israel."

What We Will and Will Not Cover Today

Now we only have 25 minutes to deal with these three areas. So
how shall we limit ourselves? What I have chosen to do is simply to
make as plain as I can the will of God which he makes explicit in
these three passages, and the reasons why we should obey it. And so
my aim is to strengthen your spiritual ability to resist three
temptations: the temptation to break a trust in your relationships,
the temptation to marry an unbeliever, and the temptation to
divorce your spouse. One or more of those applies to every person
in this room from childhood to the oldest among us.

Now that leaves unanswered a hundred questions. What if someone
breaks trust with you? What if your child marries an unbeliever?
What if your spouse abandons you and presses you for divorce? The
Bible has something to say for our guidance in all these areas. And
I pray that God will guide our study together over the coming
months and years. I hope the whole range of biblical truth and the
whole range of human need will be touched in a way that only God
could design for our good.

Performing Back Surgery

As a little part of that life-long goal I want to try to do some
back surgery this morning. Some of you remember my high school
friend Nancy who came to Minneapolis a while ago to have back
surgery for sever scoliosis—that's a distorted curvature of
the spine. They operated and put steel rods up her back. The aim
was to straighten her posture, and relieve pain, and strengthen her
back.

Well, that is what I want to do. I believe that the word of God
in this text—especially the reasons that God gives for his
commands—is like steel. If a person is willing to receive it,
and if the surgery is properly performed, your life can be made
more upright, you can be spared many pains, and your moral backbone
can be greatly strengthened. So let's try it together. You prepare
yourself for the surgery and I will try to handle these steel rods
as delicately as I can.

1. Malachi 2:10—General Relationships

First, in verse 10 Malachi tells us God's will for our
relationships in general, and gives us three reasons why we should
be eager to do it.

Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us? Why then
are we faithless to one another, profaning the covenant of our
fathers?

God's Plain Will for Our Lives

The will of God for his people is plain from this verse. He
wills that we not be faithless to each other. This word for "be
faithless" or "break faith" or "deal treacherously" is used in all
three of the sections of our text this morning (2:10–16). In verse
10: "Why are we faithless to one another?"—referring to
general untrustworthiness in our relationships. In verse 11: "Judah
has been faithless . . . and has married the daughter of a foreign
god"—in reference to the marrying of unbelievers. And verse
14: "You have been faithless to the wife of your youth"—in
reference to divorce.

So the sin that runs through each of these areas of life is this
failure to keep a trust, the failure to keep a commitment. It is
the breaking of an agreement or covenant or contract or
promise.

Two Alternative Ways to Live in a Community

So what Malachi does with this key word is to show that
community life is supposed to be ordered by the faithful
fulfillment of promises and contracts and oaths and covenants and
commitments. But this order has given way to the disorder that
comes when people give in to the power of self-centered emotional
impulses.

In other words by consistently using this little word bagad and
tracing faithlessness through in all the relationships of the text,
Malachi makes clear for us two alternative ways for people to try
to live in a community.

One way is what you might call covenantal order—it's what
the OT means by shalom. All relationships are made peaceful and
pure by the fulfillment of covenants and promises and oaths and
contracts and commitments. Children to parents, and parents to
children. Husbands to wives and wives to husbands. Employer to
employee and employee to employer. Citizen to state and state to
citizen. The peace and prosperity and joy—the shalom—of
the community is held together by the deep strong spirit of
covenant-keeping that pervades the community. The very fabric of
the community is the trustworthiness of its people. Do they keep
their commitments?

The other way for people to try to live together in community is
the opposite of covenantal order; it's what you might call the
disorder of self-indulgence. In this community the spirit of
commitment-making and commitment-keeping has been replaced by a
spirit of emotional and physical impulse. The moral fabric of
faithfulness to covenants and promises and contracts is unraveled
and what's left are the individual strands of private
gratification.

Malachi's Very Relevant Message

Let me give you a quote from a secular sociological study of our
own day to show you how the ways divide between these two forms of
community life.

A woman finds herself pregnant and wants to abort, or a man
feels bogged down by commitments to job, spouse and children, and
wants out. A person's aging parents are interfering with his
pleasures, and he wants someone to take them off his hands. A man
wants to sleep with his secretary, or is tired of making a living
and desires relief from his commitments. How we, as a society and
as individuals, view the decisions made about fulfilling these
desires is the crux of the problem. (Daniel Yankelovich, New Rules,
1981, p. 248)

Malachi's message to us this morning could hardly be more
relevant or more needed. Five times in this text he warns us not
"to act faithlessly"—or to put it positively, he urges us to
make covenant-making and covenant-keeping the fabric of our life
together. He warns against the pseudo-freedom of individualistic
self-indulgence, and he tries to help us see the strength and
beauty and joy and peace (shalom) of being faithful in all our
relationships and all our commitments.

Three Reasons Not to Be Faithless to One Another

The three reasons given in verse 10 are:

We have one Father: "Have we not all one father?" (v. 10). In
other words when we betray a trust, we betray the family of God. We
deceive our own flesh and we dishonor our Father.

We
have one Creator. "Has not one God created us?" (v. 10). If
I am faithless to you, and break my commitment to you, I act as
though you and I are accountable to two different Creators. I act
as though my Creator lets me function on one set of
terms—like self-indulgence that ignores my commitment to
you—while I expect your Creator to hold you to another set of
terms—like respect for my rights and stay off my case. But if
we are both utterly dependent upon and accountable to one and the
same Creator, that double standard will not do.

The third reason we should not break faith with others is that
it profanes the covenant of our fathers. "Why then are we faithless
to one another, profaning the covenant of our fathers?"

What was this covenant? It was God's commitment to be Abraham's
God, to work for him and bless him and give him life and
hope—and not only him but all his true offspring, including
you and me in Jesus Christ the seed of Abraham. In other words
whenever you or I lie or fudge on our duties, or betray a trust, we
act as though God is not able to take care of us and protect us and
give us a fulfilling life if we keep our commitments. And when we
act as though God cannot or will not give us what is best for us on
the path of faithfulness, we profane his covenant. We act as though
it is untrustworthy and worthless.

Those are Malachi' arguments: we have one Father; one God
created us; and his covenant with us in Jesus Christ is the
guarantee of his help and friendship. Therefore let's be a people
of radical integrity and faithfulness in all our dealings whatever
it costs!

2. Malachi 2:11–12—Marriage to Unbelievers

In verses 11–12 Malachi moves from relationships in general to
the specific issue of marrying unbelievers. God regards this as
another instance of being faithless or breaking trust. He calls it
an abomination. Why is that? Let's read verse 11:

Judah has been faithless, and abomination has been committed in
Israel and in Jerusalem; for Judah has profaned the sanctuary [literally: the holiness] of the Lord, which he loves, and has
married the daughter of a foreign god.

The Primary Issue

The primary issue here is that the person that the man of Judah
was marrying did not love and trust and follow Jehovah, the true
God of Israel. She was not a daughter of the true God; she was a
daughter of a foreign god.

So the point of the verse is that when we claim to love God with
all our heart and soul and mind and strength, and then willfully
choose to unite ourselves with an unbeliever in the most intimate
personal union on earth, we profane the holiness of God. We act as
though our emotional drive for human intimacy is more important
than affirming the preciousness of God's holiness and nearness.

God calls this choice an abomination and he says in verse 12
that those who walk into it with their eyes open are asking for God
to turn his back on them. "May the Lord cut off from the tents of
Jacob, for the man who does this, any to witness or answer, or to
bring an offering to the Lord of hosts!"

What Is and Is Not Being Said

Don't hear more than the text is saying here.

It is not saying that it's impossible in every case for an
unbelieving spouse to be converted. It is not impossible. We have
seen it happen and 1 Peter 3 says that we should live so as to make
it happen.

It is not saying that if you are married to an unbeliever, you
should get out. Five hundred years later some believers in Corinth
drew that conclusion and Paul wrote them to tell them precisely not
to pull out (1 Corinthians 7:12–13).

Rather what this text is saying to us clearly this morning is
this: if the choice of marriage partner still lies before you,
settle it in your mind right now never to marry anyone that does
not love the Lord Jesus with all his or her heart. You are not too
young to do this. From the time I was 13 years old it was one of
the settled convictions of my heart: I would guard myself from the
rising of all romantic affection for any girl who was not a true
Christian. And by the grace of God I was not only spared a life of
tragedy, but given a marriage and a family as peaceful and
satisfying as any I have ever known.

3. Malachi 2:13–16—Divorce

Finally, Malachi turns to the third and final instance of acting
faithlessly, namely, divorcing a spouse. Verse 16: "I hate divorce,
says the Lord the God of Israel."

The versions differ so much on verse 15 that it would take us
too long to settle on the best translation. So I am going to simply
draw out three simple and clear reasons from verses 14 and 16 for
why God hates divorce and why Christians should never seek to nullify their union with a living spouse.

Marriage Is a Covenant

In verse 13 we learn that God refuses to accept the offerings of
the people. In verse 14 they ask, "Why does he not?" And the answer
is given:

Because the Lord was witness to the covenant between you and the
wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless [bagad!],
though she is your companion and your wife by covenant.

The reason that divorce has kindled God's wrath is that marriage
is a covenant. The life together is rooted not in the sand of
emotional satisfaction but in the rock of covenant commitment. And
two things in this text clarify what sort of covenant that is.

It Is a Covenant Before God

One is in the first part of verse 14: "The Lord was witness [to
the covenant] between you and the wife of your youth."

"I, John, take you, Noël, to by my wife, and I do promise and
covenant before God and these witnesses to be your loving and
faithful husband as long as we both shall live."

"COVENANT BEFORE GOD!" That is the essence of marriage. And when
God stands as witness to the covenant promises of a marriage, it
becomes more than a merely human agreement. God is not a passive
bystander at a wedding ceremony. In effect he says, I have seen
this, I confirm it, and I record it in heaven. And I bestow upon
this covenant by my presence and my purpose the dignity of being an
image of my own covenant with my wife, the church.

God Is in a Covenant with His Wife, His People

We know this from Ephesians 5, but there is pointer to it in
verse 16, and this is my final observation from the text. Verse 16
says, "For I hate divorce, says the Lord the God of Israel." This
is the only time in the whole book where God calls himself the "God
of Israel." I don't think that is an accident. Because the root
reason why God hates divorce is that it is fundamentally a
contradiction of his covenant with his wife, his people.

He is the God of Israel. The fellowship may be broken. There may
be exile and separation. There may be anger and tears. But when
whole story is told, the sum of the matter is Isaiah 54:4–8:

Your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name; and
the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, the God of the whole earth
he is called. For the Lord has called you like a wife forsaken and
grieved in spirit, like a wife of youth when she is cast off, says
your God. For a brief moment I forsook you, but with great
compassion I will gather you. In overflowing wrath for a moment I
hid my face from you, but with everlasting love I will have
compassion on you, says the Lord, your Redeemer.

God will never nullify his marriage to the elect. Christ will
never forsake his bride, the church. He is a covenant maker and a
covenant keeper. And that is the meaning of marriage.

The Merciful God of the Covenant

And wherever you are this morning in your
relationships—and none of us is precisely where we should
be—remember these words of the covenant: "The Lord, the Lord,
a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in
steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for
thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin" (Exodus
34:6–7).

I invite you to turn from all sin. Cast yourself on the mercy of
God. And in the security and freedom of his unbreakable
covenant

don't back out on your commitments

don't marry an unbeliever

and don't divorce your covenant wife.

John Piper (@JohnPiper) is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books.

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